TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) Oumar Ballo had 18 points and 16 rebounds, Cedric Henderson Jr. added 15 points and No. 8 Arizona dominated inside to beat Colorado 78-68 on Saturday night.

The Wildcats (24-4, 13-4 Pac-12) opened with a rash of turnovers, falling into an early 12-point hole. Arizona righted itself quickly with a big run and slogged through a slowed-down second half by shutting down the Buffaloes.

Henderson and Ballo picked up the slack with leading scorer Azuoulas Tubelis in foul trouble, combining to hit 14 of 21 shots. Those two helped Arizona outscore Colorado 40-24 in the paint.

The Buffaloes (15-13, 7-10) used a closing 17-3 run to upend Arizona State 67-59 on Thursday night, but a big hole was too much to overcome in one of the nation's toughest road environments.

Tristan da Silva had 18 points for Colorado, which shot 38%.

Arizona bounced back from a loss to Stanford by shooting 56% from the floor in an 88-62 thumping of Utah on Thursday night.

The Wildcats stumbled out of the gate against Colorado.

Arizona made sloppy passes for turnovers on four of its first five possessions while the Buffaloes ran their offense crisply. Colorado made seven of its first 11 shots to take an early 12-point lead.

The Wildcats shook out the cobwebs after that, upping their play at both ends of the floor.

Arizona went on a 12-0 run to tie it up and held Colorado without a field goal for 3 1/2 minutes to build a 41-30 lead. The Wildcats hit 17 of 32 shots and didn't have a turnover the final 15 1/2 minutes of the first half to lead 46-34.

Colorado quickly cut the lead to seven to start the second half, but went nearly 5 1/2 minutes without hitting a shot as Arizona extended it to 54-41.

The Buffaloes slowed down Arizona will full-court pressure, but seemed to have defensive breakdowns at crucial moments - like a dunk by Henderson at the shot clock buzzer.

BIG PICTURE

Colorado: The Buffaloes couldn't have gotten off to a much better start in what's been a house of horrors for them. Colorado managed to bog down Arizona's offense in the second half, but struggled offensively to remain winless (0-11) at McKale Center since joining the Pac-12 in 2011-12.

Arizona: Turnovers have been a problem for the Wildcats at times this season, but most of the time they've been able to overcome it. They did it again Saturday night behind a stifling defense that's gotten better as the season has progressed.

UP NEXT

Colorado: plays at Southern California on Thursday.

Arizona: hosts rival Arizona State next Saturday.

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POSTGAME MEDIA

Colorado head coach Tad Boyle
Clearly you guys were able to take advantage of some of their miscue's turnovers out of the gate, but just offensively why were you guys unable to maintain the ball movement and the efficiency we saw kind of in those first eight minutes?
"Yeah. You know, we got thinking that scoring was going to be easy because we came out to play so well offensively out of the chute. We didn't move the ball side to side, and then we came down and we took you know, four or five quick jump shots, and those jump shots turned into your transition points for them because they didn't go in. And the one thing you have to be careful of in this building when you're playing Arizona, is if you shoot the ball in five seconds and you don't make it's the first pass of their fast brain and they got going, you know, their offense guy going off of our bad offense. And that's what killed us in the first half. Midway through when we went to our bench they went bang, bang, bang, I mean, they just, there was a feeding frenzy offensively for them. You know, when our bench came in, which was a little disappointing because I thought they played so well for us, you know, on Thursday because our starters got us off to a good start and made their run. So I thought our impatience really, really hurt us in the first half. offensively and it turned into bad defense as well."
 
Your press slowed them down and in the second half it seemed like you had like key defensive breakdowns a couple of times
"Yeah, we did. And you know, we put the string together stops we talked about getting three kills a half. I know we had two kills in the first half and then kill us three stops in a row. I don't know if we had any in the second half. Because we kept breaking down defensively. And that but I thought the second half offensively we played with a lot more patients. And quite frankly, we got good looks in the first half and we got good looks in the second half. And at some point, you have to make your open shots. You just have to whether they're open threes or open twos pull ups at the rim. We didn't do that consistently tonight. And I think if we do it's a different you know, it's a different ballgame. But we didn't you know and I you know you've covered me long enough to know there's very rarely do I say we got to make more shots. I mean, but tonight, we needed to make more shots because against Arizona when you get a good look, you have to you have to convert and you don't have to do it every time we have to shoot 100% But you know we shot 38% in the second half and I thought we can really move the ball got good looks. But we couldn't make the shot. But we won the second half by two points. And the reason we wanted is because on offense we had patients and our defense our zone we went to zone and kind of just slow them down because Arizona they can score in bunches and score 46 points in the first half. But we broke down and couldn't get stops when we needed to get stops. Couldn't make enough shots. Ballo was a beast. He's got 18 rebounds. He was terrific tonight he's a good player."